With the advent of high speed copiers, for example xerographic reproduction machines, the need for mechanisms to automatically present documents to the copier to be copied and for "finishing" or manipulating the output of the copier in such a manner as to simplify operator involvement was recognized. To meet this demand a number of document handlers have been offered which physically separate individual documents from a stack of documents to be copied, present the separated document to the platen of the copy machine for copying and thereafter return the copied document to the document stack. In separating and manipulating the original documents, extreme care must be taken to prevent undue wear and tear or mutilation of the original document. Even with the most sophisticated mechanisms presently available, occasional misfeeds, multifeeds and/or document jams may be encountered. In view of this, it has been the practice to present each document to the copy machine and produce a number of copies of each document, which copies are routed to a multibin collator to provide collated output which can be easily stapled or bound by the machine operator. While the use of collators greatly reduces the amount of document handling necessary, the collators required for high volume copies are both large and expensive. Obviously the least expensive way of producing collated output requires continuous recirculation of the original documents such that one complete copy of the original document set is produced for each circulation of the original document in the document handler. However, it can be seen that unless extreme care is taken, in instances where hundreds of sets are necessary, recirculation of the original documents the required hundreds of times will eventually cause wear and/or damage to the document, no matter how carefully they are handled if the documents themselves are being manipulated by the mechanisms.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an automatic document handler wherein the documents to be copied are placed in suitable planar carriers, which carriers are adapted for manipulation by the document handler mechanisms, the document being accurately located and maintained on the carriers as the carriers are recirculated past the copying station of the machine.